The invention relates to an incubating apparatus for the selective and exact treatment of histological preparations.
Treatment of histological preparations has hitherto been made mainly by hand. Apparatus available on the market for a partial mechanization of histological methods can be applied only for some individual processes. There has not been, hitherto, a variable apparatus universally suitable and applicable for all methods of incubating and imbedding of biological preparations. The various histological incubating techniques as implemented, require not only a large labor expenditure but also extreme care, so that methods of immuno-histology and histo-chemistry cannot be performed by unskilled staff or such as has been trained on the job. Maintenance of uniform temperatures are of uniform periods of activity can be made herein only with difficulty, so that reproduceable results cannot be insured.
Such deficiencies may have grave consequences, since the incubation of histological preparations may be of importance for the results of immuno-histological or histo-chemical examinations or electron microscopy, and thus decisive for a diagnosis. This applies in particular to renal diagnostics or for the immuno-histological or histo-chemical classification of tumors.
The invention has as its objective the creation of an incubating apparatus allowing manifold and also automatic, treatment of histological preparations of the most various types.